240 CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 



Though, without these reasons and solicitations, the writer might have 

 still refrained from touching this subject, it was not that he had not held the 

 same opinion, and, except in his own case, would have urged the same course. 

 It is certain, that the tracing of the steps by which any new discovery or 

 improvement is reached, must always be interesting in proportion to the 

 admitted importance of the results; and indeed such a statement seems' 

 almost necessary to induce the reader to accompany the author from his first 

 premises to the remote conclusion, and which otherwise is only reached 

 through a devious and tedious passage, and by a course of reasoning which 

 is wanting in interest, because the application and tendency of the argu- 

 ments and proofs are not seen when they are first presented. The objection 

 which restrained the writer from before pursuing a course which he would 

 have highly approved in others, was, that such a narrative of opinions and 

 facts would be entirely a personal narrative, and therefore obnoxious to the 

 charge of egotism throughout. The statement of the reasoning which led 

 to the successful use of fossil shells on the poor lands of lower Virginia, 

 would be incomplete if not accompanied by a narrative of early labors, and 

 the early as well as latest results and effects. In the whole of this, there 

 would be scarcely any thing but statements of what the writer thought, and 

 reasoned, and performed. But the subject must be so treated, or not at all; 

 and having consented to give the narrative, the writer will throw aside all 

 scruples and objections, and endeavor to enter as much into detail, as he, 

 if a reader of others' agricultural improvements and practical operations, 

 would desire there to find. 



With the beginning of the year 1813, when barely nineteen years of age, 

 the easy indulgence of my guardian gave to me the possession and direction 

 of my property ; which consisted of the Coggins Point farm, with the neces- 

 sary and yet very insufficient stock of every kind. It is scarcely necessary 

 to add that, at'my very early commencement, I was totally ignorant of prac- 

 tical agriculture ; and such would have been the case, according to the then 

 and now usual want of training of farmers of Virginia, even if my farming 

 labors had been postponed to a mature age. But I had always been fond of 

 reading for amusement, and the few books on agriculture which I had met 

 with had been studied, merely for the pleasure they afforded, at a still ear- 

 lier time of my boyhood. The earliest known of these works was an 

 English book, in four volumes, the * Complete Body of Husbandry,' of which 

 I have not seen the only known copy since I was fifteen years old. This 

 work was probably a mere compilation, and of little value or authority ; but 

 it gav6 me a fondness for agricultural studies, and filled my head with 

 notions which were, even if proper in England, totally unsuitable to this 

 country. ' Bordley's Husbandry' next fell into my hands, and its contents 

 were as greedily devoured. This was indeed written in America, and by 

 an American cultivator ; but as he drew almost all his notions from English 

 writers, his work is essentially also of foreign materials. 



Thus prepared, I commenced farming, ignorant indeed, but not in my 

 own conceit. The agriculture of my neighborhood, like all that I had ever 

 witnessed, was wretched in execution, and as erroneous as well could be in 

 system, whether subjected to the test of sound doctrine, or the improper 

 notions which I had formed from English writers. I was right in condemn- 

 ing the general practice of my neighbors ; but decidedly inistaken in my 

 self-satisfied estimate of my own better information and plans. 



Just about the time that my business as a cultivator was commenced, 

 Col. John Taylor's 'Arator' was published; and never has any book on 

 agriculture been received with so much enthusiastic applause, nor has any 



